The Legendary Ford RS200 Rally Car Is Coming Back From The Dead And You’ll Be Able To Buy A New One In America – The Autopian

Over the past decade, we’ve seen a handful of automakers experiment with the concept of continuation cars — brand-new slices of old. There was the Jaguar C-Type continuation, Aston Martin’s Goldfinger DB5 continuation, and of course, a litany of continuation-spec Shelby Cobras. These are all well and good, but what about continuation cars for a different generation? Well, put away the Fender Telecaster and fire up the E-MU Systems Emulator II, because the beautiful Ford RS200 Group B homologation special is headed back into limited production.

If you aren’t familiar with the RS200, let me give you a bit of background. Back in the early 1980s, Ford was finding itself thoroughly outgunned on the world’s rally stages. See, it was the dawn of the Group B era, and while these cars looked a bit like normal everyday family vehicles, they were actually thoroughly mad, turbocharged within an inch of their lives and sporting four-wheel-drive. However, Ford took things a step further and in 1984 showed off something that didn’t look like a family car at all.

It was called the RS200, and it was a turbocharged, all-wheel-drive sports car made for gravel. Its fiberglass body came from Reliant, the same company that built the Robin three-wheeler, but its engine came from Cosworth. The chassis was co-designed by former Formula One engineers and configured as a mid-engine layout with double-wishbone suspension, making it thoroughly unlike any other Ford you could buy in showrooms despite being unleashed upon the general public in just small enough quantities to satisfy homologation requirements.

Unfortunately, a prolonged development period meant that the RS200 hit the world rally circuit in 1986 — the last year of Group B. In fact, it can be argued that the RS200 started the death of the class, due to a fatal collision at 1986’s Rally Portugal. The wild cars simply didn’t blend well with lax spectator safety rules, marking an end to what was undoubtedly rallying’s craziest era.

Now though, the RS200 is back and officially blessed by Ford. Boreham Motorworks, a sister company of the one behind the Evolution E-Type restomods, has partnered with the blue oval to bring this iconic rally car back this year as a road-legal continuation vehicle. Interestingly, it’s described as a global partnership, you’ll be able to buy one in America, and because there aren’t exactly and old chassis still in storage in a warehouse somewhere, these RS200s will be new from the ground-up, but blessed by the makers of the original.

As of now, pricing and quantities haven’t been specified, but it feels safe to assume that the answer to the former is a lot, and the latter, a few. However, if you miss out on your opportunity to snag a reborn RS200, don’t fret, for it won’t be the only iconic Ford expected to roll out of the workshop once more. The partnership is also expected to spawn a rebirth of the Escort RS2000, and a total of five different Ford models of old. Odds of one being a Capri? I guess we’ll have to wait and find out.

(Photo credits: Boreham Motorworks, Ford, Bring A Trailer)

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